A baby rusty-spotted cat, born at a French zoo in 2010. The newly discovered fossil is thought to belong to the same genus as modern rusty-spotted cats, which are among the smallest felines in the world. Catherine Gugelmann / AFP via Getty ImagesScientists in China have uncovered a fossilized jaw fragment of a newly identified, extinct cat species that was so small it would have fit in the palm of your hand. The discovery was detailed in the journal Annales Zoologici Fennici in November and could represent the tiniest cat ever found.This cat is clearly smaller than a domestic cat, lead author Qigao Jiangzuo, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, tells Live Sciences Emma Bryce. It is comparable to the smallest living cat, [at around] 1 kilogram [2.2 pounds].The researchers identified the new species as a member of the genus Prionailurusin other words, it was an ancient leopard cat, a type of small wild cat thats still native to parts of Asia. Leopard cats include four or five living species, per the study, and the littlest among them is the rusty-spotted cat (Prionailurus rubiginosus) in South Asia. Along with the tiny-but-deadly black-footed cat (Felis nigripes) in Africa, these are the smallest cats that exist anywhere on Earth today. But the prehistoric felines size would have been akin toor even smaller thanthese modern miniatures.From the jaw fragment, which includes two surviving teeth, Jiangzuo and his colleagues inferred the extinct creatureto be between 13.7 and 19.7 inches long. They named the speciesPrionailurus kurteni.Because early leopard cats had small, fragile bones and mostly lived in habitats that were conducive to rapid bone degradation, their remains are rarely uncovered, according to the study. But the researchers discovered this specimen in the Hualongdong Cave of eastern China, which is known for its paleontological finds. There, archaeologists have previously revealed the remains of humans dating back hundreds of thousands of years. The cat fossil was found in a geologic layer dated to between 275,000 and 331,000 years ago, suggesting Prionailurus kurteni prowled the Earth alongside early humans.The food scraps these archaic humans left at the Hualongdong site might have attracted rats and small leopard cats as well, Jiangzuo tells the Chinese news agency Xinhua. Its unclear whether these cats constituted part of the cave dwellers diet, due to the absence of butchery marks on the fossils.The angle of one of the teeth on the jaw fragment is the first fossil evidence to link leopard cats to a common ancestor of both domestic cats and the grumpy-looking Pallas cat, reports Live Science.Overall, the fossil also provides insight into the diversity of prehistoric leopard cats. According to the paper, many small cat fossils had historically been assigned to the genus Felis, which includes modern domestic cats, without careful study. But this finding paves the way for researchers to get more detail about the cats of the late Middle Pleistocene.Moving forward, we plan to systematically survey the fossil cats in China and around the world, which were not well studied in the past, Jiangzuo tells Live Science. We hope to trace the origins and past diversity of the cat family.Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.Filed Under: Animals, Bones, Cats, China, Cool Finds, Fossils, New Research, Paleontology, Teeth